Get candidates for this years’ European elections to make a stand for Free Software

From May 22 to 25 in 2014 European citizens will vote for candidates standing for the European Parliament. This is an ideal time to engage with politicians with why Free Software matters. Help us to get the candidates across Europe to declare their support for Free Software.

April, a prominent Free Software association in the French speaking world, has launched the Free Software Pact Initiative. FSFE invites Free Software advocates in Europe to ask European elections candidates to sign this declaration of intent, and thereby take a stand for Free Software, in EU legislation for instance. By doing so, candidates will become aware of the importance of Free Software, and might multiply the message. In addition, you can also contribute by helping to translate the Free Software pact.

The European Digital Rights Organisation (EDRi) is running wepromise.eu: a campaign to help European citizens to insist on their fundamental rights in the digital society: transparency, privacy, encryption, anonymity, control of surveillance and the “support [of] measures allowing or promoting widespread use of Free Software (Open Source Software). This includes government and public entities, in particular entities that receive funding from the EU budget.” The crucial part here is: you have to promise now to vote for candidates who signed or will sign the 10 point Charter of Digital Rights.

FSFE strongly supports both campaigns. “This is a very good way to show European politicians the ever growing community of Free Software advocates all over Europe. The more people participate in contacting parliamentary candidates, the more impact we will have” says Erik Albers, community coordinator of the Free Software Foundation Europe. Sam Tuke, FSFE’s campaign manager adds "signatures are a good way to take candidates at their word whenever there will be EU legislation to be passed that might endanger the existence or growth of Free Software.”

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And the winner of the election for FSFE's Fellowship GA seat is… Election results

…Stefan "Penny" Harmuth! The election period for this year's Fellowship GA seat has ended on February 28. There was just one candidate running for the Fellowship GA seat this time. The more we are happy that still 20,3% of our Fellows took their chance to support Stefan Harmuth in his run for the seat.

Thanks to all Fellows who participated and congratulations to Stefan!

Result details 1. 2. 1. Stefan Harmuth 148 - 2. I am not a candidate - 18

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FSFE comments on UK proposal on document formats

FSFE has submitted comments on a proposal by the UK government to use only document formats based on Open Standards in future.

"We applaud the UK government for its focus on competition and openness", says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's President. "This proposal is an example to other governments on how to do it right."

The UK government has proposed to rely exclusively on open document formats for newly created documents. Each of the proposed standards (HTML, ODF, TXT, CSV) addresses a different technical need. These recommendations are based on an extensive study of user needs among the government's staff.

"We are delighted that the UK government is using Free Software and Open Standards in a strategic fashion. Their approach will likely increase competition among suppliers, make public sector IT more efficient, and reduce costs," says Gerloff.

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#ilovefs Report 2014

On February 14th, people all around the world expressed their gratitude and appreciation not only to their partner but also to Free Software and its contributors. With our yearly #ilovefs we asked you to thank your favourite developers and projects and were overwhelmed by the resonance in blogs, social networks, and mailing lists.

Developers and contributors of Free Software projects work hard to ensure our freedom and on this day surely many of them gained new motivation. Thank you for participating in this year's #ilovefs campaign and enjoy some of the many love declarations we collected:

Adrienne sees Free Software as an important part of her life and explains why even little steps in using Free Software are meaningful:

I use it because it is written by people who care deeply about what they do, and who want to keep improving. It reminds me of the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam, which means repairing (or healing) the world. Free Software means you can read the code, which means you can improve it — and then pass it on for the better. Free Software repairs the world by advancing projects made with integrity to people who need them, free of charge. One day, I hope to contribute code to projects that people use every day.

Tamara was an intern in a local hacklab and says that knowing and teaching the ideology and message of Free Software is crucial:

What is really important is that they, while teaching me the purely technical stuff about Linux and helping me with programming, were insisting that I know and get familiar with the ideology and what stands behind Free Software, and why is it crucial to us. They gave me documentaries to watch, they talked, shared, repeated. And I thank them. I am a better person and hacker and have made friends for life.

For Anna, Free Software is especially interesting when mixed with other aspects of an open society :

Today, February the 14th, is an international celebration of our love... for Free Software! People love it for all sorts of reasons, but for me, it's about the creative freedom that Free Software brings, with new software and new skills just a sudo yum install away. I feel especially blessed when Free Software meets Open Culture; then the party really gets started!

#ilovefs is crossing borders

One speciality of #ilovefs is the broadband of people expressing their love for Free Software. Year after year we recognise that Free Software is not only a topic for programmers and professional users but for many groups of people: the average computer users, artists, journalists, companies, and among them also politicians. This year the parliamentary group of the Green party in Germany wrote how important Free Software is in times of global surveillance and in general. And as a small extra they also sent a picture expressing their appreciation for the Free Software community, among them Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Toni Hofreiter, Britta Haßelmann, Claudia Roth, Jan Phillip Albrecht, Hans-Christian Stöbele, and Konstantin von Notz.

There were also several events which focussed on "I Love Free Software Day". In Manchester, Free Software was even celebrated with a week-long festival full of workshops about Bitcoin, encryption, Wordpress and Free Your Android. Anna and the other volunteers had a very busy week with co-organising it but it was worth it: More than 100 people were learning, teaching and having fun with Free Software!

Media coverage

The "I love Free Software Day" was also topic in several online news. For example, the campaign was promoted in Linux-Journalist, Unwatched, Linux-Community, heise.de, Linux-Magazin, ICT News, Dropnodes Magazin, and Netzpolitik.

More blog posts

Beside the high participation in microblogs we also noticed a lot of blog posts this year. Below you can find a selection of articles you should have a look at:

Many authors dedicated their post to particular projects or developers, for example:

Andreas Färber from SUSE thanked the QEMU developers, Anatolij Zelenin wrote a small library for Android containing some information about #ilovefs, Isabel says thank you to the contributors to Apache, Debian, Eclipse, Elasticsearch, Linux, ZeroMQ, any all other useful Free Software projects, Max Mehl presented ZNC, an IRC bouncer with lots of functionalities, Erik Albers thanked the developers of OsmAnd for making the planning of his bicycle tours so much easier, Karsten Gerloff said thank you to wget, a small, fast and efficient tool for downloading used also by whistleblowers. Guido Arnold appreciates org-mode for making his planning process much more easier, whereas Jens Lechtenbörger lists a lot of usefull Free Software apps for his new Fairphone which respect his privacy and Tobias Platen also appreciates the release of the Fairphone kernel under GPL although there are a lot of other things to improve. Matthias Kirschner dedicated his post to the developers to his favourite music player programs, fedoraFTW highlights the importance of freedom for all people working on the fedora OS, Hugo Roy explains why he probably will never use another email client than mutt, Konstantin and Paul from Fairnopoly present Blender, zsh, vim, and Tmux as essential parts of their work, Martin Ingenhoven thanks among others Gnome, ufraw, pinta, digikam, XFCE, and GIMP for their work. Mirco Lang shows his readers why simple text adventures like "robot finds kitten" are great and Sven Lamprecht dedicates his #ilovefs post to darktable, kdenlive, and ArchLinux.

There were also a lot of articles about Free Software and its advantages in general, for example from:

Kevin Keijzer who helps other people by building computers from old hardware which only runs with Free Software or from Siegrid who appreciates especially the independence gained by the usage of Free Software. Christoph Langner loves the political and democratical aspect of Free Software whereas Oskar Welzl used the #ilovefs day for telling interested co-workers about the importance of Free Software. The Free Software Foundation offers a long list of software they use on a regular basis for their tasks and totschka likes the philosphy of community and freedom. Benjamin gains a lot of knowledge and fun by using Free Software and Steve Woods would simply be lost without the Free Software he uses every day.

There were also a lot of posts in other languages, for example from Databiblioteket , Emilio Gil , Geekstorming , HUP , Planeta Diego , Victorhck in the free world , Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS / OSS , or Carsten Agger

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Show your love for Free Software

On 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free Software users to think about the dedicated hard-working people in the Free Software community and to show them their appreciation like last year.

"Every day, we use Free Software and often take it for granted. We write bug reports, tell others how they should improve their software, or ask them for new features. Often we are not shy about criticising. So, to let the people in Free Software receive a positive feedback once a year, there is the 'I love Free Software day'." says FSFE's vice president Matthias Kirschner, who initiated the #ilovefs campaign in 2010.

For the "I love Free Software Day" the FSFE has several suggestions how to show your love creatively to the people behind Free Software, including:

Write an e-mail or letter to contributors expressing how much you like what they are doing. Share your feelings about Free Software in social networks and microblogs using #ilovefs . Or write a blog post about your favourite Free Software application. Buy your favourite contributor a drink. Or buy someone else a drink and while enjoying it, tell her/him about your favourite Free Software program. Give a contributor a hug (ask for permission first). You might wonder how many Free Software developers live in your area! Help us collecting quotes for our testimonials of people loving Free Software. Ask developers, artists, politicians, or other users to send their quote to fellowship@fsfeurope.org. Take a picture of yourself showing your feelings for Free Software, and post them online. Donate to Free Software initiatives or to FSFE to express your gratitude. They depend on your contribution to continue their work. So check out your favourite organisation and make a donation. You can be sure they will love you back. Finally you can help spread the love by sharing the campaign banners, by e-mail, (micro)blog or by spreading through any social network (please use the hashtag #ilovefs for this).

"Free Software gains its strenghts by the community and the ability to work together and join forces." says Matthias Kirschner. "We should not underestimate the power of a simple "thank you" for people who are easing our everyday work. So say thank you on 14th February!"

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